Lets Reduce Global Population

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Smail lists many reasons for why a fully effective program of zero population growth would not be enough to reduce the worlds population. We have already surpassed our carrying capacity for the earth. At this point we have doubled it. He states that it would take two to three generations of not producing to reach a point of population stability. We have an unusually high proportion of the current worlds population under the age of 15 which has not yet reproduced. Birth rates remain high why mortality rates have fallen. In less developed worlds reproduction has doubled.
The earths carrying capacity is beyond as i mentioned.A carrying capacity is defined as humans in long term adaptive balance with their ecological surroundings. He states it is finite meaning there is an end no matter what people think. We have tapped out our resources. There is no way that the earth is going to be able to withstand the high probability of continued scientific and technological progress. We are now at six billion people, there is no way we can support nine billion. Experts believe by 2050 we will reach that point. A solution to this problem is people learning how to live in their means. As consumers we need to buy less junk. We need to only buy food that we are going to eat. The world wastes a huge amount of food a year. We also throw away things that could very well be fixed. We would rather just buy something new. Conservation is the best way to solve the problems that our world is facing.
When Smail states “come to regard ourselves more as the Earths long term stewards than its absolute masters,” he means that we need to take in account all of the species that lives on this earth. We act as if we are the rulers of this world and everything falls second. Humans were not here first. There are so many different species that are just as important if not more than we are. We talk about this in Conservation class often. Humans do what we feel is right for us and don’t think about the big picture. We are all a huge web and if we are missing parts everything is affected. We have to leave our Rain forests and National Parks alone. Conserve and preserve, that should be our motto. If you cut a tree plant another one. Its as easy as that. It is scary to think that our children will see this happen. Disease, hunger, and violence are going to be more common than now because of over population. It needs to be addressed right away.
BY ASHLEE

How Student Life Is Different at Religious Colleges

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Reasons why religious college students generally seem to avoid the kind of trouble that puts secular campuses in the headlines are for the schools over all strong religious morals that they stand by. The schools who are against the alcohol, drugs, sexual activity and violence that standard college’s are known for. More and more secular college’s allow the student body to rule on whether they make certain dormitories co-ed. This is so the schools administrators won’t question the students sexual orientation, also allows heterosexual couples to live together. Religious college students are happy to be away from the peer pressures and temptations that they would have gotten at secular schools for having particular religious beliefs. The students that attend religious colleges are happy to the there around other peers who share the same principles and values. The parents of these students allow the school to act on their behalf “Loco Parentis”.
Discipline in religious colleges take a religious approach. They help the student from making the mistake a second time finding out why he/she made the error, but still holding them accountable for what they did wrong. This is more affective than just giving them the boot. In religious colleges staff will attempt to work the issue out with a bishop as an advocate, noting that people are human are sinners and tend to make mistakes. This first step helps to avoid going to the administrators. I would be much happier to sit and spend time with counselors discussing my bad behaviors rather than being handed an expulsion slip without being allowed a chance in select instances.
The dating rules at Patrick Henry College require the students to their parents’ permission before pursuing a romantic relationship, and Bob Jones University require chaperones for all their dates. Magdalen, which has the strictest dating policy-no dating is allowed, they are against “steady company keeping”. As well at Magdalen is the rotational seating they have during meals which stops cliques from forming.What this achieves is it allows these students to form a health relationship and bond with those of the opposite sex without the fear of peer pressures some would normally have in the secular schooling. Many of the christian faith schools are advocates for the students to hold off any romantic relationships until they are absolutely ready for marriage. As for dating at Brigham Young University, it’s not uncommon to find couples holding hands or making out during “fireside” talks. Students are seen with their arms around one another , where the school is against premarital sex is taken serious, the rules of enforcement is left primarily through the peers. As I see it, many students may feel that being a virgin in their early 20’s may seem socially unacceptable by todays standards can been seen as a strong piece of ones character to another to which I am admirable for.
BY Anthony

Religious Colleges

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The majority of students attending a religious school have made the choice to attend these colleges knowing the high morals and standards that will be expecting of them. By choosing one of these colleges, the student has already committed to the behavior expected, which is to avoid alcohol or drug use and discourages intimate relationships. In addition to understanding the clear guidelines set , these students have a very strong faith which guides them.
During their time at these colleges, if there is a poor judgement made by them andwhich  goes  against the policies, the students are encouraged to confess after much self reflection, discuss why this occurred, and through counseling decide on an appropriate punishment. The consequences of the act are basically left to the individual to process with the guidance of the faculty and spiritual leaders.
There are a variety of policies throughout the many different education establishments. In terms of dating / personal relationships there is always a policy in which relationships are considered to be far from a priority. For example, Magdalen does not allow dating, they are strongly against steady company keeping, and students often marry shortly after graduation. Bob Jones University does not allow any kind of physical contact and requires a chaperon on any date. Patrick Henry requires that there is parental permission before any romantic relationship is pursued. These three examples show an aspect of religious schools that can be very important to an individual. They know ahead of time that they will be meeting people of the same mind set , who will also adhere to the same policies. There will not be any rush to be “in” a relationship, and getting to know a person can be a much more casual and relaxed process.

Choosing this type of college reflects not only what an individual has decided to study,  but also the way they desire to live their life.

Religous Schools

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Religious schools often enjoy a relatively low incident rates, and there are many reasons for this. The major reason for this seems to be the support structure. An infraction will result in discipline, but the difference is that there is a peer pressure to do right as well. Another reason for this can be attributed to the religious cultures that attend such schools. Many of who are law abiding, upstanding citizens who hold conservative reservations about experimentation. The discipline process is also a huge improvement over secular campuses, because religious schools try to teach why something was wrong and have a priest or bishop doing the counseling. They also involve parents in the disciplinary process; giving even more pressure to conform to the rules. I do not know anyone who would willingly upset a holy man. Schools like Magdalen, Bob Jones University, and Patrick Henry College have taken a hard line approach to dating on their campuses. Magdalen outlaws dating, while Bob Jones and Patrick Henry Colleges require parental permission. These rules establish a control to help prevent sin, but more importantly teen pregnancy, campus STD’s, and they help to develop a person’s character. It is much easier to develop these personal attributes when you are not too busy working on a relationship. As a former catholic school student I feel that Religious school’s best ability is promoting conformity. This give a better environment for learning by removing many of the distractions young adults face and also reduce the forming of bad adult habits.

Domestic Violence

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India is rife with domestic violence. Relatively minor wife battering is commonplace, and Indian men and women alike readily agree it is justifiable. Why does it occur? There are several reasons. A man who beats his wife will not be objurgated if he is intoxicated. Wife battering will also occur as a dowry demand. These women are held as prisoners in an attempt extort money from their families. Also, women who are sterilized (sterilization is a common form of birth control in India) are more likely to be beaten. After all, there are basically no repercussions for hitting a woman who can’t bear you a son, right? Wives who are adulterous or disobedient in general will garner beatings, as well. The only time there are consequences for wife battering are if the beating exceptionally violent, or if none of the above conditions are met.

Child abuse is another problem in India. You would think that modernization would lead to a decrease in domestic violence, but that has not been the case. This is apparent in that people of all classes, NOT just lower class people, admit to corporal punishment of their children—56.9% of parents, in fact. Industrialization has hugely increased intrafamilial stress, which contributes to this violence. Young girls are especially victimized, because Indian culture labels them as nearly worthless compared to boys. Modernization contributes to this too: feticide is used to kill off baby girls in utero. This could not happen without modernization because how would people know the sex of their fetus without ultrasound?

Vietnam is another arena of domestic violence. The beautiful Vietnamese scenery belies what is going on in the homes of the citizens. In fact, there is more than one type of domestic violence here: invisible violence and visible violence. The invisible violence is not physical violence. Instead, the men of society dominate the women through terror and intimidation. This continues even though Vietnamese women are far more productive than men; the women earn more money AND do the housework. Visible violence—which leads to many divorces—is more akin to the wife battering in India. Dissatisfied, poor men take out their aggravations on their defenseless spouses. The problem is also spurred by the adherence to old Confucian beliefs, including that everything is a hierarchy—and in family life, men are higher up this hierarchy. In Vietnamese visible violence, we also see some of the same justifications that we saw in Indian wife battering, such as alcohol and unfaithfulness (on the part of the wife).

By Roy

Living on Minimum Wage

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I was surprised by how quickly, and unconsciously, the author’s mind set switched to being like that of her temporary peers.  She entered the experience with an automatic out.  She was an educated white-collar professional who chose to experiment with the minimum wage, knowing that she would return to her upper-middle class life, after 30 days.  Despite these realities, the author quickly became not just lower class in situation but also in outlook.  She came to view her friends as exotic and decadent in their use of money.  She developed a servile attitude towards her managers rather than standing up for her beliefs.  She took on the parts of the minimum-wage culture related to hopelessness and being stuck in an impossible situation.  I was surprised by how quickly circumstance could overcome a lifetime of socialization and experience.
My only experience with a minimum wage job was as a cashier.  Fortunately, my management did not take advantage of us, despite the store being located in a poor neighborhood.  The employees had few other options and the customers had low expectations, but we were still treated far better than the author was at any of her jobs.

The circumstances that led me to this job were similar to the author’s.  My job was vaguely self-imposed.  It was an experiment in what my life would be like with only a high school education. I had thought that I did not want to face the challenges of continuing in school.  This job persuaded me that I should continue.  Fortunately, my family supported me through this and could continue to do so temporarily.  I did not have the face the possibility that I would have immediately be entirely self-supporting.  Similarly to the author, I entered this situation from a different status and as an experimenter rather than as a necessity.

Despite much thought, I cannot figure out a way to define the living wage.  I have never had to cobble together a livable income the way the author had to.  I feel as though having never faced these challenges, it is not my place to decide how to set a living wage.  I find myself only able to come up with difficulty in defining it.

To start with, how do we decide what the absolute minimum is?  I know that the local cost of living, the cost of nutritious food, family size and the ideal maximum number of hours worked have to play a role.  But how do these all interact?  Can changing the minimum wage and redefining a living wage account for all those problems?

Also, what demographic assumptions must we make?  Does a living wage assume a family of four with two adults and two children, just as the poverty line does?  But that premise does not account for current realities about lower class families.  With the feminization of poverty, more families living below the poverty line consist of single-parents with multiple children.  Does the living wage need to account for one income rather than two?

BY XAVIER

“Prostitution: A World Wide Business of Sexual Exploitation.”

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Prostitution is a big issue in today’s society.  Some women do it as a means to pay the pills. They feel that they have no other options to make money, so they sell their body to make a living. For those women, I don’t think it should be illegal. If you have absolutely no other way to support yourself and/or your family, then you should not be judged by how you make your money.

Some places are legitimate businesses that you can go and pay to have a good time. The people who work there chose to be there and are not disappointed in their jobs. That’s how they make their money, and again, I don’t think it should be illegal. It’s that persons choice to do what they want with their body.

But for the people who kidnap and force girls into sexual laborers should be stopped. Young girls who do not have a choice and are being pimped out need help to get out. This is illegal and yet it’s still happening all over the world. People just ignore the fact that women and girls are being sold as a sex slave, raped, and beaten with no way out. To me, that doesn’t count as prostitution. Prostitution is when a person chooses to sell their body for money. Not when they are forced.

According to Farely, of 130 interviewees, “82%… reported having been physically assaulted since entering prostitution.” If prostitution was made legal for those who choose to do it, less assaults and rapes would happen because the women would be able to go to the police about it. With it being illegal, women and girls are getting beat up and assaulted without any justice.

Prostitution is a business. People chose to be in this business. If it stays illegal, lots of women will continue to get beaten and raped without any help, for fear of getting  into trouble with the law. As bad as people may see prostitution, nothing is worse than letting women get assaulted and the offenders get away with it.

BY EMILY

Not Getting By in America

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The federal minimum wage is still only $7.25 an hour, which comes to $290 a week, before any taxes are subtracted (not to mention health insurance costs, etc.); even at the Massachusetts minimum wage of $8 per hour, the totally per week is only $300, per month approx. $1200. The last time I checked, the least expensive one bedroom apartment I saw advertised was $600 per month. If taxes only took 25% of my $1200 monthly income, I’d be left with $900, and if rent was $600… three hundred dollars left for food, car related expenses (if I could even afford to keep the car!) clothing… the activities my children currently get to take part in –horseback riding; cross country skiing – would clearly have to go, as there would be absolutely no way we could afford them, on my salary, alone. Even if I didn’t have any children to take care of, it would still be pretty difficult to feed and cloth myself, and keep my car running, on only $300 a month, impossible, I’d say. And I certainly wouldn’t have enough money to take a sociology class at community college! Tho’ I suppose I would then qualify for financial aid.

But even if I got financial aid, where would I find the time (and energy!) to go to school? Perhaps the most surprising thing about Ehrenreich’s experience was how completely exhausted she was, how her life was really all about going to and from work, even before she tried taking on the second job. For a woman with children… taking on the second job would make it impossible to be around for the children, esp. in those well known after school/before dinner and bedtime “witching” hours, when we heard adolescent crime peaks, and which are the hours when my friend, the single mom, is pretty sure her then 15 year old got pregnant… while she was busy working two jobs, so she could afford to move her single-parent family to a better apartment…

The issues begin to compound. And, as Ehrenreich points out, if one gets sick, or injured and can’t work for a while, thereby losing what little minimum wage income one does earn… homelessness and utter financial ruin are not far away, unless one somehow finds a very different way to live (alluded to with George living in the “flophouse”, where he had to wait for his turn to sleep, until someone else went to work thereby freeing up a bed… ) and/or one is able to borrow from, stay with friends. People do apparently survive, on minimum wage jobs, but it obviously isn’t easy, nor is it pretty, as Ehrenreich discovered.

I think the only way a family with two children could survive on a minimum wage job would be thru extreme creativity, extreme good health, not eating much, and, good fortune and good friends and neighbors. I think surviving on a minimum wage salary would require a very different kind of cooperative community-based creativity, than the kind of “individualistic” living I currently do, with my family.

I do think the minimum wage should be raised; this may not be very easy, in the current political climate. In addition, the minimum wage would have to be raised so much, to help a single-parent live above the Federal poverty line, that I am not sure this is realistic – thinking the wage could be raised that much. An article in the 3-31-11 issue of The New York Times addressed just this issue, “Many Low Wage Jobs Seen as Failing to Meet Basic Needs”. A link to the article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/01/business/economy/01jobs.html?src=me&ref=homepage

According to the research reported on here, minimum wages would need to be significantly more, to enable families to live at a level where more than just absolute basic needs could be met. Ehrenreich conducted her experiment all the way back in 1998; we as a society still face similar issues, today. The more things change, the more they stay the same?

BY LAURA

Prostitution: A worldwide Business Of Sexual Exploitation

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Farley argues that prostitution is not a free choice. People especially men use the women as sex slaves. The women from the poorer countries will more often be prostitutes than a middle income lady living in the United States. Children both genders are introduced into the sex trade at young ages (even by the age of 12). A lot of women of that are different races are targeted by pimps easier because they come from a lower income country. In this world today there are not as many male prostitutes as there are as women prostitutes. Farley thinks that many of these women and men prostitutes could be runaways from their homes where they might not of gotten along with their family or homeless kids that never had a family to begin with, or got rejected by them. Most likely women that have been abused while growing up as a child will are more likely to become a prostitute than another lady who was brought up in a nice and healthy home. Women are transmitting sexually transmitted diseases. Being a prostitute women are being raped and hurt badly. For all the women Farley has interviewed about seventy percent of them had gotten raped. I have not lived in an area that I have ever seen prostitutes out on the street looking for business; I have only driven by strip clubs that must be full of them. I had a friend, whose sister was a prostitute. She did not enjoy the job, but it’s what brought the food home for the family. The husband didn’t work, so it was up to her how to bring the money home. She picked Prostitution because it was easy and convenient with her schedule. She did not enjoy the job, but she never got abused or taken over when she was doing her work.  I think Prostitution be illegal in every country. It would stop the discrimination towards women. Hopefully in the near time future these horrific things that are going against the women will stop, and this world will stop Prostitution all together.

BY AMANDA

“Prostitution” A world wide business

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Melissa Farley disagrees that prostitution is a free choice, her report about women in Vancouver showed that 63% of the women prostitutes they interviewed were abused as children. Many of the articles in this chapter talk about women having little to no choice growing up as to what they will do. The trafficking of women starts when they are children forcing them to become something of ownership, they do not get an education and when they are older they have little choise on another occupation. I think most prostitutes were raised in a manner of abuse, from what i read in this chapter you could make this connection all over the globe.

Prostitution reflects the intersection of race, sex and class oppression by where prostitution is popular. Cities that are of a lower class seem to have more prostitution than an upper class city, making prostitution for some people the only meens of making a living. “For example, in Minneapolis, a city that is 96% White European American, more than half the women in strip club prostitution are women of color.” Seeing Ourselves.

The legalization of prostitution would make it an occupation and a government run job, paying taxes and having laws other than, prostitution is illegal. This differs from decriminalization because it makes it normal, like decriminalizing but the government is now responsable for certain aspects of public health. Decriminalizing it would keep the risk off the government.Farley is opposed to both because either way you look at it, women are still experiencing violence and being treated very poorly. I agree with her position, women in prostitution are treated very poorly. Legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution would just make it more “ok” for pimps and johns to abuse, mistreat and take possesion of women.

BY JOHNATHAN